only in quito

This has become the school year that will not begin.

Originally, at my school teachers were to begin work on August 25, and students were set to begin September 1-3 (secondary students on the first, and primary students on the third.) A few months ago, the Ministry of Education here in Ecuador decided to mandate the date for the start of the school year as the first Monday in September, which this year happens to be the 7th. My school petitioned for an exemption around this mandate, but we found out two weeks ago that our petition was denied. Therefore, our start date for all students was moved to September 7th.

To complicate matters, we found out this past Thursday that the mayor of Quito decided to stagger the start date of students, as to avoid having some 48,000 students on the road all on the same morning. So now our beginning dates are as follows: Prekindergarten and kindergarten students begin September 7th, primary students begin September 8th, and secondary students on the 9th.

And as if this wasn't enough, due to all these changes we have now lost two days of Christmas vacation and a week of spring break (leaving us with only one week of break in April instead of two.)

Now the impending question is whether or not we'll lose days to the H1N1 virus.

It's never a dull moment here...